Subsidy: NLC Ranks Nigeria Highest Country Exhibiting Wickedness Against Poor Citizens
...Says Gap Between Poor, Rich In Nigeria Widening Daily
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has said Nigeria is the only country in the world exhibiting the highest form of wickedness against its citizens and has described the removal of fuel subsidy as a war against the poor.
President of the NLC, Comrade Joe Ajaero, who spoke at the NLC National Symposium with the theme: ‘Nigeria Economy and the Crisis of Survival: Robbing the Poor to Pay the Rich,’ accused the Federal Government of further enriching state governors with the palliatives which were supposedly meant to cushion the adverse effect of the subsidy removal.
Ajaero who cited an example that governors were in the habit of converting whatever was meant for the poor masses and workers for their personal use and benefit, explained that the palliatives that the Federal Government was giving to a whole state were barely enough to adequately cater for just one local government area in a state.
He said: “What is happening in the country today is a class war between us the dispossessed and those that have. They want to continue to have. Whether it is the issue of subsidy or whatever. So it is a war against the poor. I have not seen such wickedness against the poor anywhere as seen in Nigeria today.
“The announcement we got about the N5 billion allocation to the states is so annoying. You allocate N5billion to states and five trucks of rice. If you share five trucks of rice to a local government, they will not get one, one cup.
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“If we accept the position of the Bureau of Statistics that we have 133 million Nigerians that are multi-dimensionally poor before the subsidy removal; and after the subsidy removal the number must have increased or doubled. If you multiply 5 billion by 36 states and Abuja, you will get about 185 billion. If you divide it by 133 million multi-dimensionally poor people, each person will not get up to N1,500. Is that the palliative?
You will take the palliative and give it to the governors. Anything you call palliative and give to the governors is not for workers.
